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Where to start? It's not my book, but this book has a bunch of arguments: https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-ebook/dp/B073CPP581 https:

Where to start? It's not my book, but this book has a bunch of arguments: https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-ebook/dp/B073CPP581 https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-e... I should have a cut-and-paste answer to this question. I actually do already, but under my real name and I don't want to dox myself. Search for my username here for some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27210604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27210604 (some comments are "below the fold" (e.g. this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27219137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27219137). And here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26944659 But I'll try to summarize: The core things that blockchain stuff tries to solve are not actually the hard problems. The hard part of online commerce is not that customers can reverse credit card transactions. The hard part of contract law is not automatic payments. The hard part about property law is not atomic transactions of money and deed transfers. So just off the bat, almost everything that is presented as a "solution" is not actually solving anything meaningful. But it doesn't stop there. It's actually making the actual hard problems worse. For cryptocurrencies, it makes courts all but impotent. A court can't compel you to pay child support, or return the money you stole. You can just say "no". It's not trivial to track money, but the stated goals of cryptocurrencies is to make it hard or impossible to trace, and to compel. It's not easy to find money laundering, or just criminal money being moved around. AML & KYC laws exist. They're not perfect. They can inconvenience legit people, and they can be gotten around. But they do help greatly. The explicit goals of cryptocurrencies is to get around AML & KYC laws. This is what Pintrest was talking about. So that's for "anonymous". We don't actually want someone to trivially move $1B anonymously. We as a society, as a people, don't even want people to be able to send money any way they want. E.g. we don't want people to be able to send money to ISIS. There's a "baby and bathwater" argument that can be made here, but since cryptocurrency people don't even WANT to prevent this use case, it's not what they're making, or selling. Like airline security, it's not effective because it's perfect, but because there's too much risk that one of the layers will catch you. And the cryptocurrency dream is to remove all those layers. Reversibility: People don't want this. One of the main reasons to use a credit card AT ALL is that people want reversibility. If that's all you wanted then you can probably just accept debit cards. And as for smart contracts: All smart contract systems need a way for a court to interpret the contract. The contract may not be legal, it may have been signed under duress, etc.. So all smart contract systems need this escape hatch. So how is it adding any value? And the hard part of contracts was never what's being solved here. The hard part is codifying your intention into legalese, and conflict resolution. The codifying is still there, but now it's computer code instead of legalese. But conflict resolution is removed? Why? The most ridiculous one is "land ownership registry". You know who ultimately decides who own a piece of land? The government of the country it's in. Do you think France will bow down to "math" if a French court orders a house to be sold, but the would-be seller is some anonymous "wallet" that refuses? France would just "fork the blockchain", and the authoritative fork is the one backed by police who will come remove anyone who claims ownership of something they don't own. In an extreme example, if the ownership of Mona Lisa was "on the blockchain", and a rogue employee sold it, do you think France would hand it over? Of course not. So it means nothing. I realize this comment is all over the place, and not diving deep into any one argument. It's more like a survey (though not complete) of various arguments, that can then be explored in more detail. This comment is long enough already. And note that all this is in addition to technical problems like PoW/PoS, electricity use, scalability, transaction speed, 51% attacks, etc... Even assuming all those are solved, the problem is the the very GOAL is a dystopia.

tornato7 5y ago
Illegal activity in crypto isn't as prevalent as you may think, and it's actually on the decline: https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-being-used-for-criminal-activity-and-is-a-haven-for-illicit-856a71dfb399 https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-... ISIS has figured out how to get funded long before crypto was a thing. Banks already launder billions and that's harder to trace than Bitcoin transactions. And now, like it or not, crypto already exists and is here to stay, so perhaps it's better to start building legitimate use-cases around it than to just mumble about ISIS from afar. All of your examples seem very contrived for how crypto won't work. I can make up examples of areas where crypto won't help, too. It's not supposed to be the end-all use case for everything. The lack of conflict resolution in crypto is a side effect of decentralization. When you're talking global interoperability and value exchange, conflict resolution is off the table anyway. What court am I supposed to go to if I wire money to a guy in Nigeria and he doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain? Ownership of the Mona Lisa might not be one, but there are many use-cases where removing a centralized mediator has a ton of potential benefits. One example might be Basic Attention Token, where advertisers and users can get a better experience because there's no need to satisfy the Google Ads middleman. What's the use for a conflict resolution mechanism in online advertising? Same with device connectivity with helium network, or decentralized lending that can provide better interest rates because there's not a huge meatspace banking infrastructure to support.
- knorker 5y ago
  > All of your examples seem very contrived for how crypto won't work. I'm not saying crypto won't work. I'm saying every single idea that's been proposed won't work. And the base problem is that the whole point of these coins is disguising "I want to create a world problem" as "I want to solve a problem". "It's hard to get around [AML, KYC, tax, etc.] laws" is not a "problem" that needs to be solved. Yet again and again, this is what coiners propose as a potential "killer app". > When you're talking global interoperability and value exchange, conflict resolution is off the table anyway. Huh? > What court am I supposed to go to if I wire money to a guy in Nigeria and he doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain? Your bank makes it hard to do this, to make sure you're not being scammed. And what problem exactly are you trying to solve? If you send BTC to Nigeria and the guy doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain then BTC by design doesn't allow any recourse. Our current system may or may not be able to help you, but BTC goes out of its way to say "fuck you, you should just never have made a mistake". But also, if someone moves $10B to Nigeria, you can bet your ass they'll find a way. C.f. when one of the Pirate Bay founders, while living in Cambodia which doesn't have an extradition treaty, hacked some banks. VERY quickly that whole "doesn't have an extradition treaty" did not matter at all, and he got arrested and put in prison. He should have bought bitcoin/monero. Noob. :-) It's actually telling that he had full access to the bank's mainframe, yet still only managed to steal like a couple of thousand USD. The rest of the transfers were blocked or reversed. So the system worked as intended. And as we've seen time and time again (cough, Mt Gox), bitcoin just doesn't work even as intended. > One example might be For many years now we've heard hypotheticals, but no actual solutions. The time for brainstorming should have been over, considering the HUGE environmental and crime impact. At this point it all sounds like "it's not worked so far, but can we just continue setting fire to children? I think it'll do something good one of these days". > decentralized lending that can provide better interest rates because there's not a huge meatspace banking infrastructure to support. But can we have an actual solution, not just handwaving, here? How are you going to solve the intersection between lending contract and laws? What about bankrupsy? What about court ordered child support? What about inheritance, death, etc? These blockchain things are trying to solve what is actually the EASY problems, not the hard problems. Like, what do you think will happen if you say "can I get a better interest rate, if I agree to be excluded from chapter 11 and chapter 7 laws?". Likely no, no you cannot. Your "math" doesn't magically make the government, judicial system, and police just "go away". And for good reason.

tornato7 5y ago

Illegal activity in crypto isn't as prevalent as you may think, and it's actually on the decline: https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-being-used-for-criminal-activity-and-is-a-haven-for-illicit-856a71dfb399 https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-... ISIS has figured out how to get funded long before crypto was a thing. Banks already launder billions and that's harder to trace than Bitcoin transactions. And now, like it or not, crypto already exists and is here to stay, so perhaps it's better to start building legitimate use-cases around it than to just mumble about ISIS from afar. All of your examples seem very contrived for how crypto won't work. I can make up examples of areas where crypto won't help, too. It's not supposed to be the end-all use case for everything. The lack of conflict resolution in crypto is a side effect of decentralization. When you're talking global interoperability and value exchange, conflict resolution is off the table anyway. What court am I supposed to go to if I wire money to a guy in Nigeria and he doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain? Ownership of the Mona Lisa might not be one, but there are many use-cases where removing a centralized mediator has a ton of potential benefits. One example might be Basic Attention Token, where advertisers and users can get a better experience because there's no need to satisfy the Google Ads middleman. What's the use for a conflict resolution mechanism in online advertising? Same with device connectivity with helium network, or decentralized lending that can provide better interest rates because there's not a huge meatspace banking infrastructure to support.

knorker 5y ago
> All of your examples seem very contrived for how crypto won't work. I'm not saying crypto won't work. I'm saying every single idea that's been proposed won't work. And the base problem is that the whole point of these coins is disguising "I want to create a world problem" as "I want to solve a problem". "It's hard to get around [AML, KYC, tax, etc.] laws" is not a "problem" that needs to be solved. Yet again and again, this is what coiners propose as a potential "killer app". > When you're talking global interoperability and value exchange, conflict resolution is off the table anyway. Huh? > What court am I supposed to go to if I wire money to a guy in Nigeria and he doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain? Your bank makes it hard to do this, to make sure you're not being scammed. And what problem exactly are you trying to solve? If you send BTC to Nigeria and the guy doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain then BTC by design doesn't allow any recourse. Our current system may or may not be able to help you, but BTC goes out of its way to say "fuck you, you should just never have made a mistake". But also, if someone moves $10B to Nigeria, you can bet your ass they'll find a way. C.f. when one of the Pirate Bay founders, while living in Cambodia which doesn't have an extradition treaty, hacked some banks. VERY quickly that whole "doesn't have an extradition treaty" did not matter at all, and he got arrested and put in prison. He should have bought bitcoin/monero. Noob. :-) It's actually telling that he had full access to the bank's mainframe, yet still only managed to steal like a couple of thousand USD. The rest of the transfers were blocked or reversed. So the system worked as intended. And as we've seen time and time again (cough, Mt Gox), bitcoin just doesn't work even as intended. > One example might be For many years now we've heard hypotheticals, but no actual solutions. The time for brainstorming should have been over, considering the HUGE environmental and crime impact. At this point it all sounds like "it's not worked so far, but can we just continue setting fire to children? I think it'll do something good one of these days". > decentralized lending that can provide better interest rates because there's not a huge meatspace banking infrastructure to support. But can we have an actual solution, not just handwaving, here? How are you going to solve the intersection between lending contract and laws? What about bankrupsy? What about court ordered child support? What about inheritance, death, etc? These blockchain things are trying to solve what is actually the EASY problems, not the hard problems. Like, what do you think will happen if you say "can I get a better interest rate, if I agree to be excluded from chapter 11 and chapter 7 laws?". Likely no, no you cannot. Your "math" doesn't magically make the government, judicial system, and police just "go away". And for good reason.